“Morning Joe”: Ron Paul (7:35 a.m.), Steve Hildebrand (8:40 a.m.), Frank Bruni (8:50 a.m.) … Sarah Palin will appear on Jay Leno’s show next Tuesday night, the second new episode of the resurrected show. … DCCC announces today it is launching www.PalinsPrimaries.com to provide Sarah Palin with a guide to the more than 55 competitive House Republican primaries in which to get involved.” … “Highway Hypocrites”: The DNC and other Democrats (not the White House) will soon kick off an effort to highlight GOP members who opposed stimulus but tout its money in their districts.

Tomorrow's front page today — WSJ.com: "The president of Toyota's U.S. operations will apologize for the company's slow handling of sudden acceleration problems in its vehicles during congressional testimony on Tuesday. James Lentz will acknowledge that Toyota took too long to confront the issue amid poor communications within the company, with government regulators and with its customers."

Story Continued Below

EXCLUSIVE — Jeff Zucker — president and CEO of NBC Universal, who talked about working with Gore if he won in 2000 — was asked yesterday on the “Joe Scarborough Show” on ABC Radio Networks if he would run for political office: “I do think that there would be a benefit to having people who have run businesses in office — who have a sense of how to how to get something across the finish line, make hard decisions that actually everybody can get behind … I think we just have to get the cynicism behind us and we have to get some things accomplished, and I think people who can do that would be very helpful and beneficial.”

JOE: “Would you ever do it?

JEFF: “Well, it's something that I would certainly look at."

POLITICO’s “Morning Score”: Sen. McCain’s reelection campaign will announce this morning that former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is endorsing McCain, who’s battling a primary challenge from the right. Romney: “For years, I've been an admirer of John McCain. Then we became competitors. Today, I'm proud to call him my friend. … [I]t's hard to imagine the United States Senate without John McCain, especially in the critical times we find ourselves in … I am constantly reassured by Sen. McCain's continued involvement in the affairs of our nation.” McCain: “Gov. Romney is among the brightest and most dynamic leaders in our party, and I am proud to have his support.”

STATEMENT FROM CHENEY’s office: “Former Vice President Cheney is in GW Hospital after experiencing chest pains. He is resting comfortably and undergoing evaluation.”

Good Tuesday morning. EXCLUSIVE: Senate Republicans tell us they plan a ferocious response if Democrats proceed with their plan to try to pass comprehensive health reform with simple-majority votes following Thursday’s White House summit. A top aide tells us GOP senators may offer DOZENS and perhaps HUNDREDS of amendments, some forcing Dems to vote on subjects such as Gitmo and terror trials: “While debate time is limited, the number and content of amendments are not. This approach to moving health care has a lot of problems, but one Democrats haven’t yet focused on is the number of bad votes they’d have to take to get there. Amendments don’t have to be germane (well, they do, and if they’re not, Dems can move to set them aside, but we can move to waive that; either way, there’s a vote).”

PLAYBOOK FACTS OF LIFE: Top aides tell us there are not currently 50 votes for the plan in the Senate, or 218 in the House. Moderate and endangered lawmakers want the spotlight off comprehensive health reform. Instead, it’s about to take center stage.

THE BUZZ:

— Rep. Heath Shuler (D-N.C.), former NFL QB and leader of the 54-member Blue Dog Coalition of conservative Democrats, to The Daily Caller’s Jon Ward: “I was actually surprised that they’re pushing it again. The most important thing is jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs. We need to focus on jobs. … I don’t think a comprehensive bill can pass …. I hate to use a football analogy, but first downs are a lot better than throwing the bomb route or the Hail Mary.”

— Dan Pfeiffer blog post this a.m.: “President Obama has been clear that his proposal isn’t the final say on legislation, and that’s what Thursday’s meeting is all about. But after a year of historic national dialogue about reform, it’s time for both sides to be clear about what their plan is to lower costs, hold insurance companies accountable, make health insurance affordable for those without it and reduce the deficit. A collection of piecemeal and sometimes conflicting ideas won’t do.”

— Nancy-Ann DeParle, White House director of health reform, on a conference call for reporters yesterday: “The president's proposal eliminates the Nebraska [Medicaid] provision and provides significant additional federal financing to all states for the expansion of Medicaid … It closes the Medicare prescription drug doughnut hole coverage gap, as the House bill did. … It increases the threshold for the excise on the most expensive health plans to make sure that the plans — the high-cost plans have time to transition and that there's no disruption for workers, from $23,000 for family plans to $27,500 for family plans. And it starts that so-called Cadillac plan tax in 2018 for all plans.”

— Jason Furman, deputy director of the National Economic Council, also on the call: “You still get the majority of the revenue from the Senate-passed provision in the second decade, and the majority of the benefits for curve-bending and the health system as a whole. So I think if you talk to health economists, this has always been about the medium to long run.”

— N.Y. Times editorial: “It is a relief to see Mr. Obama fully engaged. … This may be the last best chance for decades to come to reform the nation’s broken health care system. Mr. Obama and Democratic leaders should fight to win.”

— WashPost editorial: “President Obama's ‘opening bid’ on health reform is not designed to entice Republicans to join the game. … And what credit or credibility is due a president who endorses a tax but leaves to his successor the unpleasant task of collecting it?”

— WSJ editorial, “ObamaCare at Ramming Speed”: “They want what they want, and they're going to play by Chicago Rules and try to dragoon it into law on a narrow partisan vote … If you want to know why Democratic Washington is ‘ungovernable,’ this is it.”

— David Brooks: “The imposition of the excise tax will be delayed until 2018, and the threshold at which the tax kicks in will be raised. … This bill may be deficit-neutral on paper. But it has just become a fiscal time bomb. The revenue will never come.”

— TNR’s Jonathan Cohn: “Taken as a whole, health care reform as Obama now envisions it would still pay for itself. It would spend a little more but it would also raise a little more, in the form of taxes on offsetting savings.”

** A message from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce: The CFPA will extend far beyond banks, creating a new government bureaucracy that will tie up tens of thousands of ordinary businesses that had nothing to do with the financial crisis in messy red tape and regulation. To learn more, visit www.stopthecfpa.com **

SPOTTED: David Axelrod, celebrating his birthday at Bulls-Wizards. (Washington had its third straight home win, 101-95.)

SCOOP — “Steele's spending spree angers donors,” by POLITICO’s Jeanne Cummings: “Republican National Chairman Michael Steele is spending twice as much as his recent predecessors on private planes and paying more for limousines, catering and flowers — expenses that are infuriating the party's major donors, who say Republicans need every penny they can get for the fight to win back Congress. Most recently, donors grumbled when Steele hired renowned chef Wolfgang Puck's local crew to cater the RNC's Christmas party inside the trendy Newseum on Pennsylvania Avenue and then moved its annual winter meeting from Washington to Hawaii. For some major GOP donors, both decisions were symbolic of the kind of wasteful spending habits they claim has become endemic to his tenure at the RNC. When Ken Mehlman served as the committee chairman during the critical 2006 midterm elections, the holiday party was held in a headquarters conference room and Chic-fil-A was the caterer. … ‘Michael Steele is an imperial chairman,’ said one longtime Republican fundraiser. ‘He flies in private aircraft. He drives in private cars. … He fancies himself a presidential candidate and wants all of the trappings and gets them by using other people’s money.’

“Louis M. Pope, who chairs the RNC’s Budget Committee, defends Steele’s expenses, arguing that a bump in costs is unavoidable for a party that lacks control of any of the levers of government. ‘Michael Steele does travel more, but he’s in far more demand. He’s a huge part of the fundraising apparatus,’ said Pope. …[D]isclosure reports document the exodus of prominent donors who have decided to shift their giving to other party committees. In 2005, the RNC raised $46 million from donors who gave more than $250 … In 2009, Steele’s RNC brought in just $24 million — nearly half as much — from big donors … Pope acknowledged the falloff but said some of it was caused by frustration and exhaustion after the 2008 election and that things are turning around. … The RNC’s fundraising problems could have real consequences in the fall, since the RNC typically acts as a bank in midterms, swooping in to help cash-strapped candidates. … With House Republicans expanding their list of Democratic targets, a flush RNC could be vital to success. There were overnights [last year] at Ritz-Carlton hotels in Chicago, Denver, Marina del Rey, Westchester and Boston.”

GEN. JONES INTERVIEW — “Afghanistan: A different kind of war,” by POLITICO’s David Rogers: “Britain’s foreign secretary testifying before a Senate committee. Russian airspace opened to American cargo planes carrying lethal military supplies. High-level consultations with China. Shared border intelligence at the Khyber Pass. And then there’s the Muslim anti-war congressman struggling with the consequences for Afghan women if the Taliban return to power. … These are just some of the different pieces that make Afghanistan a muddle — and a very different kind of war for America. That’s not all bad for President Barack Obama or the man charged with fusing together a diplomatic and military strategy: national security adviser Jim Jones. Neither can escape analogies to President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Vietnam War — a far bloodier conflict with many of the same telltale elements: border sanctuaries, government corruption, civilian casualties. But it’s almost as if Obama and Jones — faced with this intractable problem — set out to single-mindedly draw in old foes and friends alike … ‘What we coalesced around is, this is a regional issue, ... and that includes, in my view, China, India, Russia, even Iran, at least initially,’ Jones said in an interview. ‘The president’s guidance to us is be respectful, to engage, be transparent and try to bring people into the tent so they feel part of the decision.’ Fresh from a trip to the region, Jones is more hopeful that this diplomacy and the U.S. military alliance with neighboring Pakistan are beginning to produce results.”

SCOOP — Stimulus-funded airport scanners in storage — will start working within two weeks — POLITICO’s Kasie Hunt: The stimulus bill “included $25 million for airport screening machines capable of detecting explosives like those carried by the Christmas Day bomber. But more than a year after passage of the stimulus, the Department of Homeland Security has yet to install a single scanner paid for by the bill. … Records show that it took the department almost seven months … to order the 150 Advanced Imaging Technology units covered by the stimulus bill. A spokesman for Rapiscan, the California-based company that builds the machines, said the company has since delivered more than 100 of them to the Transportation Security Administration.” An official said the first machines will be operating within two weeks, at airports to be announced soon. All 450 machines are scheduled to be in use by Dec. 31. The official said the delay resulted from selecting airports and negotiating for space, then working with the airports on such issues as remodeling to provide privacy rooms.

TALKER — “ Tweets skyrocket but Twitter still in Facebook’s shadow,” L.A. Times reports: “[O]ver the last year, thanks in large part to celebrity and media attention, tweets have exploded. The company reported Monday that the number of tweets added to its site grew by 1,400 percent in 2009 to an average of 35 million a day. Just two months into 2010, 600 tweets are hitting the site each second, amounting to 50 million tweets a day. … Facebook attracted approximately 134 million unique visitors in January. Twitter had 23.5 million unique visitors for the month. Facebook users update their status 60 million times a day, outpacing Twitter's 50 million daily tweets.”

JUSTICE DEPARTMENT VIEWS THIS AS A VICTORY FOR CIVIL TRIALS — NYT A1, “Guilty Plea Made In Plot to Bomb New York Subway,” by A.G. Sulzberger and William K. Rashnaum: “The Afghan immigrant at the center of what the authorities described as one of the most serious threats to the United States since 9/11 pleaded guilty Monday to terrorism charges in what he said was a Qaeda plot to detonate a bomb in the New York subway. The man, Najibullah Zazi, admitted that he came to New York last year near the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks to kill himself and others on the subway using a homemade bomb. He characterized the plot as a ‘martyrdom operation’ that he was just days away from executing when he said he realized he was under government surveillance. Mr. Zazi, 25, pleaded guilty in United States District Court in Brooklyn to charges that included conspiracies to use weapons of mass destruction and to commit murder in a foreign country, and to provide material support for a terrorist organization. He faces a possible life term when he is sentenced on June 25.”

A senior administration official tells Playbook: “The people that have been scoring political points by attacking the criminal justice system as incapable of dealing with terrorists had to eat a big helping of crow today. This wasn't a small case. This was one of the biggest attempted attacks since 9/11, a terrorist who trained in Pakistan, returned to the United States, made a bomb and was set to blow it up on the New York subway before he was disrupted by the FBI. This was the system working as it should: law enforcement and intelligence working together to initially disrupt the plot and then to make the case going forward.”

Playbook pulls back the curtain: There are many reports that he has been cooperating and providing intel in the wake of DOJ pressuring his family, arresting associates, etc. — tools available to the criminal justice system.

ENGAGED: Former B-C ’04 and RNC convention flack and current Burson Marsteller pro Maury Donahue, the pride of Scranton, to Michael Cronin, a Merrill Lynch adviser from Frederick, Md. The couple were best friends in college at Drexel and reconnected at a friend's wedding in November 2008. Cronin took a knee and proposed on a romantic weekend at Hillbrook Inn in West Virginia over the weekend. Scranton is already preparing for the Republican social event of the decade.

ALSO DRIVING THE CONVERSATION —The (British) Guardian lead story, “Hung parliament looms as Tory support crumbles”: “Support for David Cameron's Conservative party has crumbled to its lowest point for nearly two years, according to the latest monthly Guardian/ICM poll, leaving Britain on course for a hung parliament at the coming general election. The survey … will come as a relief to Gordon Brown as he continued to fend off potentially lethal claims over his complex character, including suggestions that he bullies staff. … One of the Tory party's best known MPs, Ann Widdecombe, quit as a patron of the National Bullying Helpline, the charity which on Sunday sparked a storm at Westminster when its founder, Christine Pratt, entered the political fray, saying she had received four complaints of bullying from No 10 staff. Last night the charity was close to implosion as other patrons also resigned, saying Pratt had acted unethically. … The helpline withdrew any suggestion that the complaints involved Brown, and had to fend off criticism that it had close ties to the Conservative party.”

MEDAL MOMENT — “It's the U.S. owning the podium at Vancouver Games” — AP: “Losing a hockey game to the United States was embarrassing enough. Now Canada is raising the white flag — giving up on its brash goal of winning the most medals at the Vancouver Games. The U.S. remains on course for a historic medal haul, with a chance to take home the most hardware at the Winter Games for the first time in almost 80 years. But Canada's Own the Podium program is in tatters. And a surprising, demoralizing loss to a young American team in ice hockey — a sport Canada invented — is only making the pain deeper. ‘Woe Canada: U.S. sticks stake in our hearts,’ read the headline in Monday's Vancouver Sun. … With one medal event left on the 10th day of competition Monday, the U.S. led the overall medal count with 24 — three more than Germany. The U.S. and Germany were tied for the most golds, seven each. Canada had just four golds and nine medals overall, a disappointment for a country that spent $117 million over five years to give extra support to contending athletes and dominate the medals stand.”

** A message from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce: The CFPA will extend far beyond banks, creating a new government bureaucracy that will tie up tens of thousands of ordinary businesses that had nothing to do with the financial crisis in messy red tape and regulation. To learn more, visit www.stopthecfpa.com **

****** A message from UnitedHealth Group: What does it take to create a modern, high-performing, simpler health care system? Expanding access to care through proven state-based coverage and employer-sponsored insurance. Making health care more affordable with consumer-directed care and value-based payments. Supporting and modernizing Medicare to meet the complex health challenges of America’s seniors. And reinvesting in health to support research and innovation. Learn more about these ideas at http://www.unitedhealthgroup.com ******

Authors:

About The Author

Mike Allen is the chief White House correspondent for POLITICO. He comes to us from Time magazine where he was their White House correspondent. Prior to that, Allen spent six years at The Washington Post, where he covered President Bush's first term, Capitol Hill, campaign finance, and the Bush, Gore and Bradley campaigns of 2000. Before turning to national politics, he covered schools and local governments in rural counties outside Fredericksburg, Va., for The Free Lance-Star, then wrote about Doug Wilder, Oliver North, Chuck Robb and the Bobbitts for the Richmond Times-Dispatch, where he nurtured police sources on overnight ride-alongs through housing projects. Allen also covered Mayor Giuliani, the Connecticut statehouse and the wacky rich of Greenwich for The New York Times. Before moving to The Times, he did stints in the Richmond and Alexandria bureaus of The Washington Post. Allen grew up in Orange County, Calif., and has a B.A. from Washington and Lee University, where he majored in politics and journalism.